Shortstories

The Reset Button

I met Whispering Dave, my dealer, down in the basement level of the multi-story car park just off Shaftsbury Avenue. The usual spot. As ever he had some new product to sell, some new angle to try out on me.

“Look Nick,” he started off apologetically, “I’m real sorry about that last lot of stuff I sold you. I was totally ripped off myself with that. It was a real bummer. My guy passed on a load of duff gear to me. Apparently he got landed with a duff consignment and he had to pass it on in order to get his money back. You know how it is.”

Dave eyed me, to see if his practiced blandishments were having the desired effect. Apparently they were because he moved quickly on to his main sales pitch. “This gear is totally different from the last batch. No connection. From a totally new source. It’s coming out of a US airbase in Norfolk, so I’m told. It’s like nothing else we’ve ever seen…”

His enthusiasm was par for the course – I would give him top marks for building up the hype, at any rate. “What is it?” I asked him. “Its blotters,” he answered in a low conspiratorial tone, in keeping with his handle. “Not acid though. It’s a tweaked synthetic analogue of of an indole ring alkaloid – something like harmaline apparently, but with a hell of lot more kick to it. This shit really is in a class of its own. I’m told by someone who knows his stuff – a real head from the sixties – that this stuff is a fully-fledged Circuit Ten activator…”

I looked blank. “You know, man,” enthused Dave, really getting into his stride now, “Its Timmy Leary’s Metaprogramming Neurological Circuit. The circuit that over-rides and resets all the other circuits. It’s the master circuit. It’s the fucking re-set button, man – it will totally reset every last one of your neurological circuits right down to Circuit 1!” he beamed at me manically – “I tell you, you won’t know your own brain after dropping one of these bad boys!”

Impressed despite myself, I bought a strip of twenty nondescript-looking plain blue blotters and swallowed one on the spot. I had barely got back to my flat in Tulse Hill when it kicked in. I had barely got in the door and I was thankful for that – it was very far from what I had expected, and that was putting it mildly… In one way you could say that nothing much happened really – not visually anyway. The main effect was that I had this immense realization, a realized that completely floored me. What I realized was that I was a total twat. Not a revelation that I would have particularly wanted to have paid good money for, but there you go…